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Actually, after a couple of years of learning object-oriented programming at school and reading a really good book about planning (Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy) I have found another method that works remarkably well for me.
Go backwards.
Visualize the thing you want to build all completed and ready to work. Then pull it apart in large pieces (think nouns in singular). If the piece is still to complex for you to totally understand, pull it apart even more. Once you are finished picking the thing apart into understandable pieces you can actually start to think about what each piece does (those are your methods). Then the last part is just to assemble all of those pieces together like Lego bricks and you should have something that does what you wanted.

Interestingly I was chatting this over with a friend and he asked if I generally worked from the beginning or the end. Usually I visualise what I want and then start at the beginning keeping the end in sight. He suggested visualising what I wanted and then asking '..what would be the previous step..' and so on. My immediate reaction was that I was not too comfortable with that way of looking at it, however your method now looks quite appealing so I will have a look at it. It is also interesting that when I